Handbook of Management Scales/Mutual trust

Description
To measure the construct, the authors relied on scale items previously used by Zaheer et al. (1998), and Inkpen & Currall (1997).

Definition
Mutual trust refers to the confidence that each party will fulfill its obligations and behave as expected (Ring & Van De Ven, 1992).

Items
The relationship between the firm and its partner is characterized by:


 * Mutual trust. (0.88)
 * Reciprocity (e.g. endorsing each other’s products, cross-referencing into customer accounts, giving special discounts, matching investments, placing a link on each other’s Web site). (0.86)
 * Open communication about all alliance-related issues. (0.88)
 * Confidence that each party will keep its obligations. (0.90)
 * The firm and its partner carry out their duties as promised (saying what they are going to do and then doing it). (0.84)

Source

 * Lavie et al. (2012): Organizational Differences, Relational Mechanisms, and Alliance Performance. Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 33, No. 13, pp. 1453–1479

Comments
It is a bit surprising that the factor loading for the first item, which actually asks for "mutual trust", is lower than the one of the fourth item; this might indicate that the scale slightly misses what it is intended for and, indeed, the fourth item asks for confidence that obligations are kept, which could be due to other mechanisms than trust (e.g., contracts). It is recommended to take the following article into consideration before measuring trust-related constructs: Whipple et al. (2013), Conceptualizations of Trust: Can We Trust Them?, Journal of Business Logistics, Vol. 34, No. 2.

Related Scales

 * Trust (see also the Related Scales section there)